Jersey Filmmaker is an award-winning development and production company that specializes in branded content and sports and entertainment documentaries. Company founder and partner Anthony Seratelli started the company while playing professional baseball, combining his love of sports and storytelling to build a brand that creates thousands of video assets a year for clients and creative partners like Madison Square Garden, Fanatics, Google, Walmart, YouTube Originals, Tennis Channel, and select major league sports teams.
Partner and creative director Dan Cangelosi has been working alongside Seratelli for the last five years and casts talent using Backstage. He’s never had to look further than the variety and quality of talent available there, knowing he’ll always find the person he’s looking for.
The quest for qualified, reliable talent
Cangelosi understands the relentless tempo of needing fresh, memorable branded content. His job requires keeping up with clients who themselves are hustling to keep up with market trends, managing and expanding their brands, and unending expectations for inventive, contagious content on aggressive deadlines.
His first branded content project required him to cast a few dozen extras to fill a backyard barbecue scene for a ketchup ad. He put out a call for local actors on Craigslist–-“which was my first mistake”–-and was pleased to have gotten 20 takers.
But when shooting day came, only six showed up. “We had to call a bunch of family members to help us out,” he said, and employ some creative shooting angles to make the crowd look bigger than it was. Lesson learned.
Cangelosi said he recognized that to be successful he needed to source talent from a place tailormade to the needs of creators. He needed a platform, a kind of community, where people were serious about getting work, developing their skills—and showing up.
He’s been using Backstage to cast every project ever since.
Taking control of the casting process
To Cangelosi, it’s simple—to save time and costs for his clients, he prefers not to spend the extra time or money on an outside casting company or talent agency. Especially not when he has all the tools he needs to do it himself.
“The pace of the moment we’re in—it’s crazy,” Cangelosi said. “When you’re working so fast, especially in branded content, you need results immediately. Back and forth with an agency—you don’t have time for that.”
He credits Backstage with giving his group full control of the casting process. It doesn’t just save time and money, it reclaims control of the creative process. As creative director he knows the content and project needs best, so directly managing the casting process makes sense to him.
“Backstage allows you to take the reins. You know the vision. You know the content. You control the process” he said. “Backstage gives you the ability to find much more talent faster than anyone else.”
‘You’re going to find your person’
The more experience you have casting on Backstage, the better you understand how to navigate the platform and get to who you’re looking for faster, Cangelosi says.
An expert at posting casting calls, evaluating submissions, filtering the marketplace for exactly the talent he’s looking for, he quickly learned that talent who invest in building out their profiles, especially by including professional headshots and video reels, are serious contenders.
He has cast a lot of people who had a lot of acting experience–-and also some who didn’t.
“One of the great things about Backstage is everyone has a chance,” he says. And he has found that “if I stay open, I can discover rising talent.” Indeed, he has cast talent who have moved on to other large and notable projects. “I love seeing them succeed.”
Cangelosi has been coming back to Backstage again and again for the last five years because he knows “I will find someone genuine”–-someone genuinely interested, genuinely talented.
“You’re going to find your person,” he promised.
Some of his favorite branded content projects have been so satisfying largely for how much he enjoyed collaborating with the talent. He singles out content for RSVLTS and a commercial for Cherrypicker, which he admits was a tricky concept, though using one person to play all the roles in one piece isn’t new. But the talent cast for the role “was all in and he just nailed it. He was awesome.”
Photo source: Jersey Filmmaker, on set for Cherrypicker and RSVLTS ads
Immediate results, lasting impact
For the last five years, Cangelosi has cast 100% of his brand campaigns with Backstage.
He breaks down Backstage’s impact on his business in four ways:
- Cost
Casting with Backstage instead of using a casting company or talent agency has saved money that has gone into production or profit. Thousands–-potentially tens of thousands–-of dollars are routinely saved depending on casting needs. - Time
Going through a casting agency to find the right talent adds an extra layer of work. Posting a job on Backstage results in hundreds of submissions within a single day, which has been crucial for meeting the tight deadlines standard in branded content creation. - Control
Doing his own casting has given him and his team more control. As director or sometimes content writer, he knows best exactly who should be cast. Having to rely on an outside casting company or talent agency risks misinterpretation of that vision. - Accountability
Backstage members are committed to the craft, so much so that he has had 100% attendance using Backstage over five years. He has posted “countless” casting calls, and every person, even extras, have shown up every time. Being able to rely on talent has given his team a huge advantage, especially on projects with tight budgets that don’t allow for over-casting extras.
He urges any content producer to try being their own casting director. “You can get your hand in this pot–-you have full control of your casting, and you get instant results.”
Read more about how to be your own casting director.
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